Turning now to a new study that can help you shape up for less revealing the best diet programs and pills for your money. ABC's news senior medical contributor Dr. Jennifer Ashton is here with us. What was the cost analysis? So this is really about who is the biggest loser not just about the number on the scale but about the number in your bank account and how much is this costing and what they looked at is weight lost versus cost, cost per pound lost and then the quality of life. All of these methods were effective. However, the big winners went weight watchers and prescription medication call ed qsymia had the most bang for the buck. Any type of social network like that, jenny Craig, weight watchers works because you have a support system, it's social. You're accountable. Nutritionally it makes sense and any time you put those things together you're going to get a good result. Again, this was just about cost effectiveness when you talk about this prescription medication, we're not really sure what the mechanism is but we know it's effective. It's for major weight loss for people who are morbidly obese and not to be taken lightly. I do have some patients on it that have lost 20 pounds in six months which is pretty significant. You offer two very different winners here if you will. But they're so different how do our viewers decide which route to go. Think about it like this. If you're about to embark on a major weight loss attempt, you want to not just focus on the number of your goal in terms of the weight you're trying to lose but what you can afford. No one has unlimited resources here so you want to make your money matter and when you're talking about weight loss, there's more than just financial cost. There's social cost, medical costs. We need to take them all into account. We do and this is so effective because there's just so much out there. People want to do the right thing. Yeah, absolutely. You gave it to us. Thank you. Thank you.

This transcript has been automatically generated and may not be 100% accurate.

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